Ball of Nothing

"What are they doing?" Zero couldn\'t withhold his curiosity and asked Ottley, who was still nursing his massive headache. It was a rather bad concussion, and Zero was surprised his skull wasn\'t cracked.

The captain groaned when someone passed them by to get to the workshop below the engine room and bumped into him. Zero regretted not bringing the injured to the doctor\'s clinic, but he couldn\'t leave the engine room either. How inconvenient.

"They are preparing to remodel the ship," Ottley replied. Pepper was almost healed, and the sea otter captain wondered why he wasn\'t healed yet.

"Patience," Zero advised. "If you don\'t want to incur more injuries from trying to escape my healing zone, you should stay still."

The threat was effective, and Pepper chuckled at Ottley\'s stiffness. The sea otter looked like a misbehaving child getting scolded by his mother.

Fifteen minutes later, Pepper was sent away to salvage the mess in his cartographer\'s office. Ottley remained the only one still not fully healed, so Zero decided to do a direct treatment. It was more effective and mana conserving.

The busy crew members had to pause when they heard hysterical laughter from the engine room\'s direction and felt chills down their spine. Ottley was laughing?! Whatever medical treatment Zero was giving their captain, nobody wanted to know. Ignorance was bliss. Even the devil would agree.

Laughter was sometimes the best medicine, but in this case, Zero wondered if it was madness. Normally, healing magic worked like a soothing balm or a gentle sun. It shouldn\'t hurt a person too much unless they were in a life-threatening condition. However, Zero never came across a patient who would laugh as if he was getting tickled to an inch of his life. However, as there wasn\'t a more serious issue, Zero brushed it off as a cross-wiring in Ottley\'s DNA done wrong.

The captain recovered without problems apart from aching cheek muscles and a rosier complexion. Zero sent him off with a pat on the head before checking the engine room temperature. The ice crystals no longer disintegrated instantly but remained for a while before turning into small water puddles on the ground. The water evaporated quickly, and the room\'s humidity caused Zero to halt. Was humidity in the interior of an enclosed space good?

Thankfully, he didn\'t have to add more ice to lower the general temperature of the room. The engine started to glow slightly, sending a signal to the command room.

While the room wasn\'t scalding hot, it was still difficult to stand in it for too long. Zero didn\'t feel it, but he observed how the sea otter mechanics started sweating not even ten seconds after entering the room. It was not a good temperature to be working in. Hence, Zero did his best to assist with their engine repairs and checks by introducing more ice and adding wind magic to circulate the air within, secretly sucking back some of that humidity into his void.

"How is it?" Zero asked cautiously, adding subtle temperature regulating magic to the two hardworking sea otters.

The busy sea otters did not reply immediately as they prodded the engine with tools.

"Working well but still too hot to turn on fully. The captain wants us out of the zone asap to make repairs on the surface."

Zero paused. Temperature regulating magic worked on living things. That Kraken core... was it considered a living or dead object? Should he try it out?

Nobody was expecting the ship to start moving. The sea otters in the storage room fell over and lost their balance when the ship shot itself upwards. Zero flew across the corridor when the ship ascended to the surface in an almost completely vertical trajectory. Whoever was in charge of steering the ship must have angled it as such, wanting a gradual shift in angle. Nobody was expecting the engine to suddenly function at regular efficiency, and Zero cussed. He didn\'t expect the magic to work so well either.

In no time, the Marrissa found itself back at the surface as the engine spluttered once more, shutting down when it was shot out of the water. The safety mechanism kicked in almost immediately, and Zero could only apologise mentally for the new bruises and damages he unintentionally caused.

Through the uncovered windows, sunlight filtered in. It was pure luck that the sinking ship found a lovely calm stretch of sea to emerge from. The whirlpool at the surface should not be too far, with the violent volcano acting up almost two thousand meters underwater. However, nothing was seen on the surface. Was this what the calm before the storm meant? Zero shuddered. Either way, they should start repairing the ship as soon as they could now that they resurfaced.

Ottley couldn\'t understand what just happened. One moment, they were figuring out the best course of action to take after the engine was downed. The next moment, everyone was flung off their feet and forced to cling onto something solid for dear life. The journey to the surface wasn\'t a smooth one. It was actually terrifying to be shot up vertically, even if it lasted for less than a minute.

After the ship stopped, many sea otters found themselves emptying the contents of their stomach. The change in pressure made them ill, and not all of them were fit to start working on converting the ship into a mobile docking platform for repairs.

Truen and Bob took a look at the damage caused by the sudden engine malfunction and did not take long to figure out who was responsible for that. The guilty expression on Zero\'s face when he greeted them gave them all the answers they needed.

"Do you have nausea pills?" Truen asked as the sea otter next to him turned green, rushing for the bathroom and jostling with the other crewmates.

Zero took a look at the long line outside the tiny bathroom and felt terrible. "It wouldn\'t work," he told Truen. "But I can ease their suffering to help them adjust better to the environmental pressure."

Not wanting the sea otters to suffer further, Zero cast a temporary spell with a fading effect to help the sailors adapt to the atmospheric change quicker. As soon as he did that, the line outside the bathroom quickly dispersed. They watched as Ottley shouted orders and waited with anticipation for the ship\'s transformation.